On Writing

I like writing and I need to do it more often. I like this blog. When I write here I am relaxed: I have no real purpose in writing, no sense of expository or persuasive urgency. I have almost no readers, so I don't have anyone to entertain. There's no need to get out the fancy silverware and tell charming anecdotes and pretend to know something of world politics and remember whose drinks should have ice. When no one is watching, I don't need to have a formal topic. I don't need to have a point of view.

This is how I write: my mind drools and dribbles all day long, and sometimes I fold paper origamily into the shape of a bucket so that it will catch my viscous strands of brain-spit. When the page is filled, I dump its contents here. The process is pleasurable. I find I enjoy writing when it isn't about anything.

A Self-Indulgent Foray into Gimmicky Anthropomorphism

When you put paperclips in a container together, they shack up in long polyamorous chains, so that when you pull out one the rest hold onto it and won't let go, stubbornly entangled, as if by clinging to each other they can present a unified front against the indignity of being reduced to their mere functional raison d'être, that is, the indignity of being used to clip paper. It is usually effective. Either because I can't be bothered to separate them or because I don't have the heart to destroy their beautiful albeit untraditional strings of love, I riffle through the container in search of an unattached clip. It feels better, somehow, to pick off the ones that are already miserable and alone.

With Respect to Office Life

Procedure:

1. There is a file with respect to every tenant. When I write a letter to a tenant, I should print out two copies, send one to the tenant, and put the second in the tenant's file.

2. When I receive an email with respect to a tenant, I should print that email out, and put that email in the tenant's file.

3. When I need to send an invoice to a tenant, I should print out that invoice, and gather all documents with respect to the invoice and paperclip them together. Then I should photocopy that invoice twice and the documents once. I should staple the original documents and original invoice together, hole-punch them, and place them in a binder. Then I should staple together one of the photocopied invoices and the photocopied documents. I should fold that in three, and place it in an envelope. I should also place the second copy of the invoice in said envelope.

4. When I receive a request with respect to a new access card, I should print it out (if it came in by email). I should create an access card acknowledgement form and print out three copies. I should staple one of those copies to the original request. I should give the original request, stapled to the acknowledgement form, to security. I should bring the other two acknowledgement forms, along with the new access card, to the tenant. The tenant should sign one acknowledgement form and return it to me. Meanwhile, security will process the request, sign off on it, and return it to me. I should then remove the staple on the original request, throw out the blank acknowledgement form, and staple the signed one to the original request. Then I should file it.

My day is exactly as boring as this post. The only difference is that my job wastes more trees.

An Incident Throughout the Duration of Which I Was Rendered Speechless

It is Saturday, 5:30. I am at Union Station, with cello, stand, bag of music. My brother is there too. In fifteen minutes we need to be at Harbourfront for a gig.

It is hard to negotiate the subway with a cello, and I stop to adjust my grip. Out of nowhere appears a woman. She is overweight, haggard, hard to put an age on her because somehow you know she looks prematurely old. A First Nations woman. She is disoriented, confused.

"Which train to Sick Kids' Hospital?" she asks me.

"Uhh..." I haven't been there since I was young enough to be driven. "Erik, where is it again? Yonge line or University?"

"University. The station just south of Museum. What's it called again? Or you can get off at St. Patrick and go north."

I gesture towards the University line, then stop, frozen. The raw desperation on her face. The need to tell someone.

"My baby broke his neck," she says. "Just one year old. Just a year. Had his birthday last month."

Beams of light appear and lengthen in the subway tunnel.

"He's so young. Why does something like this happen to someone so young?" Her voice, her eyes are pleading.

I manage to stutter out a hollow "I'm so sorry." The subway is here, and she blinks and stumbles towards it. She needs something, someone. I want to go with her to the hospital, but I can't bail on my gig. She gets on, the doors close.

Erik and I walk away. For a long time we say nothing. What is there to say?

I have evah I

I am back after a long hiatus. I am squeezing words out of my brain like orange juice from a lemon—with no hope of achieving the desired result. But nonetheless I force myself to type one letter after another. This week I was alarmed to discover, having for some months now not bothered to put my thoughts into words, that I don't know how to do it anymore. My writing muscle has atrophied. This won't do at all.

My one or two loyal fans can expect from this point onwards to be dazzled with scintillating prose on a weekly basis. I commit myself to one post minimum per week. If I do not deliver, may I be pilloried in the court of private opinion.

The Great White Whale

I have acquaintances and friends enough. There are plenty of people who like me, who think I am interesting, worth knowing. Why is it, then, that I am so obsessed with the few who don't?

Consider Lisa (not her real name). I don't know her very well, and I don't like her that much. Some part of me respects her forthrightness, but most of me thinks she is despicable. She dismisses people without even giving them a proper chance—and there are few things I find more reprehensible than that.

Her lifestyle is one I could never maintain. I couldn't live with the demands of being her friend—the excitement, the drama, the parties. I am not a party girl, and I never will be. I don't find that kind of life fun. I prefer a crossword puzzle to a wild party any day.

I have had no evidence that she is anything but trite and self-absorbed. She isn't stupid—she has the audacity not to be stupid!—but she certainly is shallow. I wouldn't want to be her in a million years. I don't consider myself better than she is; I just prefer the life I lead to hers.

But some part of me craves her approval. I would give anything to have her like me—and if she did, I'd convince myself that I'd been wrong about her before. I'd find some reason to like her. I'd rationalize; I'd make excuses. I'd find a redeeming quality somewhere.

Why do I care? Because she looks down on me. Because she considers me weird, beneath notice, pathetic. A loser. Because if I can change her mind about me, maybe I can finally change my own.

I am not thirteen anymore. I've grown up and I know better. So why do I still feel like this? Why do old habits die hard?

Stagnation

Every day I tell myself that I ought to write something—whether here or on a scrap of paper somewhere. Why can't I?

Perhaps I am gradually losing my ability to think and feel. I have become somehow stunted, emotionally and cognitively.

I need a clever method of personal renewal. I need an idea. I need something to do.

Love and Poetry

To celebrate Erik's recent facebook engagement to a singer named Sara, we co-wrote a love poem for him to post on her facebook wall. Here it is in all its glory:

My little love, my darling Sara
Your voice it soothes like aloe vera
You'll make your mark upon our era
Much like Schumann, comma, Clara

My life was bleak and I was dour
Until I met my lovely flower
We will be wed — I await the hour
(I promise first to take a shower)

With this post I make a toast:
It is you I love the most

Same Old, Same Old

I hate it. I hate that I am obsessed. I hate that I check the same facebook profile over and over again, even though I know it won't have changed. I hate that I compulsively google a name so common that I'm sure to find nothing interesting at all. I hate that I sit here late at night every night, trying to come up with some goddamn excuse to send an email but finding none--because what would anyone so far away have to talk about with me? How could I possibly send a casual and inconspicuous email to someone I no longer ever see?

I hate that I am pathetic and dependent. I hate that I am a cliche. I hate that everyone else feels like this all the time. I hate that I am whining on my goddamn blog about something so petty.

I hate that I am a coward. I hate that I am stuck here. I hate that there's nothing I can do. I hate that I spend my life indulging in a whole lot of wishful thinking.

I hate that this entry is not witty, clever, or interesting, but lame and really boring. I hate that, in the wee hours of the morning, I am lame and really boring.

A Subway Love Story

Brought to you by the Toronto Transit Commission and long, boring commutes thereon.

Once upon a time, a lonely Yonge-Sheppard by the name of Lawrence was walking home when he caught a glimpse of the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She was riding along in a carriage, haughtily looking out on the world like a Queen, when suddenly she glanced down at him. They were from two Dufferin worlds, but nonetheless it was love at first sight. In that one glance, they penetrated each others' souls, and they knew they had to be together.

They began to see each other. Her name was Jane, he discovered, and she lived in a grand old manor out past the Old Mill. He was in love. He sent her one long red Rosedale-y.

Lawrence wanted to marry her, but her Warden disapproved of such a Union. He thought Lawrence was not nearly Osgoode a match as she could make--he'd never even been to College! The Warden forbade her ever to see him again.

So Lawrence sent Jane a letter via her conniving maid, Christie, who tucked the piece of Pape-r into Jane's basket of clean laundry and thus smuggled it into her room. The letter said, "I cannot live without you. Meet me at midnight in the Greenwood."

There Lawrence waited at midnight, barely able to contain his excitement. And finally she arrived. "Oh Lawrence," she gasped, "I love you so!"

When he heard those words and saw her Chester heave with emotion, he felt his Coxwell, and all he wanted to do was pull down his Duponts, pull up her skirt, and plunge into her Spadina. But he was a gentleman. Instead he bent down to kiss her lightly.

Just then, the Warden jumped out from behind a tree. "Dirty rogue," he shouted, "I will Keele you!" He was armed with a lance.

"Put your Lansdowne, sir, and talk with me man-to-man," said Lawrence fiercely. "For Jane and I are in love, and we wish to be married. We will not take no for an answer."

The Warden took the Broadview of things and suddenly saw that he was being foolish. He relented, and the two were wed the very next day. They celebrated with great fanfare and several flagons of Runnymede. They lived happily ever after.

The moral of this story is: Don't ever forget to bring a book when you have an hour-long subway ride.

Leave-taking

I spent most of the last several days saying goodbye. I'm going to be gone from Cambridge for a long time--a year, maybe. By the time I get back, everything will have changed. People will have left, will have forgotten me, will have moved on with their lives. The fragile friendships I have nurtured so carefully, the delicate green tendrils just peeking through my lonely dead-wood social life, will have been stomped out by time's cruel stiletto heels. Crush porn will cheer and vie for the movie rights.

All last week in my head I played out the tearfully perfect farewells, but they never turned out right. Each time I was nervous and thus obnoxious, nonchalant. I didn't tell people how much they mean to me. I probably never will. I'm not very good at that.

Evening Activities

I was going to reward myself with a beer tonight, a nice cold one at the bar next door, but instead I think I won't. I have done nothing worthy of reward, and I would rather sit here on my bed (looking out onto my mess of a room) and enumerate my faults. I will milk the poison out of my brain as if I were a snake; I will save it, treasure it, store it in a vial on my shelf. One day, when there is enough of it, I will spread it over my skin and watch it burn through and feel the tingly sting of eroding flesh. I will rot from the outside in and relish every second of it.

Crash!

My semester is a train wreck. It derailed, went off a cliff, flipped over a few times and landed with a loud crunching noise. Smell the air: burnt metal, burnt flesh.

In a couple of days, when finals period is officially over, they'll fish my mangled body out of the carnage, and someone will say, "But where are: two final papers, four problem sets?" I will groan and whimper, and bleed out on their shoes.

Dear Mr. Stomach,

This is a notice advising you that we find your conduct on 16 January 2007 unacceptable. According to our records, at 1:43 AM on said date you received a morsel of food from Mr. Esophagus which, according to company policy, you were required to process and forward to the Department of Intestinal Affairs. Instead, according to a complaint filed at the Gag Reflex Centre, you stated your intention to stop accepting future food packages from Mr. Esophagus, and tried to pass him back the morsel you had just received.

Here at AMZB we foster an environment of cooperation and hard work amongst our diverse team of employees that allows us to efficiently and carefully execute our very important operations. Since each task we assign is vital to the overall success of the firm, even a momentary lapse from one of our employees can be catastrophic. We therefore expect from our employees an exemplary work ethic and a meticulous care for the duties we entrust to them.

This notice serves as an official warning. Should your inappropriate behaviour continue, we shall be forced to take further action in the form of a suspension of pay or even a dismissal from our company.

If you feel that your actions have been misrepresented in this letter, please contact Ms. Brain, our Personnel Manager, and we will be pleased to review your case.

Sincerely,

The Committee for Digestive Integrity

Lonely

Back from an emotional holiday to my glib Cambridge existence. I'm not sure which is worse--feeling too much or feeling too little.

Tonight I was walking in the Square when I caught some lady staring at me. It was because I had been talking to myself--and quite exuberantly too. I think she was somewhat afraid; I was the "crazy" you cross the street to avoid.

I wasn't actually talking to myself but to a group of imaginary rapt listeners. I was explaining to them all the things I wish I could say to the people around me. Talking to people here feels slick and slippery, and you finish unsatisfied; but in conversation with my fantasy audience I can get to the root of things. We hash out ideas, laugh and cry together, really understand each other. It's less fun, though, when you can connect only to imaginary people.

I'm lonely as hell. My family is far away, and I have almost no close friends at Harvard. I miss the fuzzy warmth, the connectedness, the flow of energy you get from being around people you're close to. I spend a lot of time thinking about all the great people I see but don't know. I'm jealous of them and of their beautiful glittery lives that don't intersect with mine. I wish I were the sort of person they'd want to bother to get to know.

My grandmother's funeral will be occurring in Victoria, B.C., in just over 14 hours. I want to feel some sort of commensurate intensity, but I am cold and unsated. Everything seems unreal. I could feel if only I had people to feel with, but I am all alone.